


One More Miracle

by rumpledlinen



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-16
Updated: 2012-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-31 06:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rumpledlinen/pseuds/rumpledlinen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the time of the after, John tries to deal with Sherlock's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One More Miracle

**Author's Note:**

> Well, hello! This is my first foray into Sherlock fic, and I do hope I've gotten everyone's voices right.
> 
> This hasn't been Britpicked or beta'ed, so if you notice any mistakes, let me know! :)

John hadn't realized how much he'd have to adjust to life without Sherlock.

At least, not until he’s gone – until it’s days after Sherlock’s left him and he’s standing alone in their ( _his_ , now, his) flat, looking around at everything that does and doesn't belong to him.

He had a life before, he knows he did. When he thinks back, he can almost remember it - can remember what it was like when he was only John Watson, _Doctor John Watson_ , can remember talking to his therapist and not saying much because he had little to report.

He remembers those days and he hates them, who he was, back then.

He had eighteen months with Sherlock, eighteen, but he feels the loss more acutely than anything he's felt before.

(He feels the loss more than he's ever loved anyone, and that's why, he supposes, every date he's been on has gone to shit.)

He doesn't have it in him to care, anymore.

_Love is a dangerous disadvantage._

He hadn't understood what Sherlock meant.

Now, he does.

*

He misses.

He's not sure what it is that he misses, but he feels the loss achingly.

Some days, he can't get out of bed - some days, he's stuck there, curled up, because the weight of what he had and what he didn't have, what he allowed and didn't allow, is piling up on him.

Sherlock had made him feel like an idiot, but John had always known where he stood with him.

He doesn't know where to stand, now.

People talk to him and he's on different ground; they're too careful, too polite and kind, in a way that they never were when he was Sherlock's sidekick, and he finds himself missing those days, because at least then he knew what was and wasn't.

He doesn't know, now; he walks around and he's never sure if he's awake or asleep, if he's himself or not.

It's maddening.

_Sherlock would treat me the same_ he thinks, one day, and he has to close his eyes against the pain, has to physically stop himself from folding in, from curling up and hiding until he can feel without feeling again.

*

Sherlock wouldn't want him to feel this way.

Sherlock wouldn't have wanted him to feel so alone, so out-of-place now that he's -

( _Dead_ , he makes himself think, and it hurts but he's got to admit it. This is getting pathetic.

He has to move on.)

_But it doesn’t matter what Sherlock would have wanted_ , he thinks, some days when it gets bad, _because he’s gone, buried in the ground_.

*

Mrs. Hudson tries to help.

She helps even after John shouts at her because she understands, because she knew him too, because she's going through what he's going through.

(It isn't the same, for them, though - it can't be. Because Mrs. Hudson - she wasn't - didn't -

_love_ , he thinks, one night, and the thought hurts too much to continue.)

*

The days blend together.

_One more miracle_ , he says at the grave, and now it's become his plea.

_Come on, Sherlock, one more miracle. For me. Your old friend John._

_Friend._

He knows it's futile. He knows Sherlock won't come back.

It doesn't stop him from hoping.

(He wonders if he cares.

He feels guilty for wondering.)

He thinks _Friends protect each other_ and it hurts, an ache in his chest, because that's what Sherlock did, was protect him.

He thinks _you monster_ and again the ache curls up inside him, waiting to be felt, and this time he lets himself fall, sink to the ground, sob without tears.

( _I never thanked him._ )

Sherlock had made himself seem more inhuman in order to save John, and he – he doesn’t know what to do with that.

*

There are words that he can't say to his therapist.

He sees her and opens his mouth and nothing comes out.

"What were you going to say to him?" she asks, and her voice is soft but he closes his eyes, because the words hurt.

"I was -" and he shakes his head, cuts himself off. "I can't."

"That's okay," and she's too calm for his liking, reaches over to pat his hand.

In his mind, he jerks away, yells at her, tells her she doesn't know anything.

In reality, he sits there, lets himself be comforted.

Comforting, he learns, is less about the receiver and more about the giver.

Everyone wants to feel like a good person, and he lets them.

* 

He never gives up hope, not really.

_You weren't a fraud_ , he tells himself, tells Sherlock, as though this monologue of his is going to find its way to him. _You weren't_.

He passes a cab and sees it - the hair - 

And he's running, before he can help himself.

The cab outruns him and he nearly collapses, shaking his head.

It would have stopped, if it were Sherlock.

Sherlock wouldn't have - couldn't have -

He shakes his head, tears stinging the corners of his eyes.

_He's dead_ , and it's the first time he's accepted it.

*

His limp returns.

He can't walk to even the most mundane of places, now, without his cane, and he feels sick at himself but there's no one to save him, no one who would bother trying.

*

He visits Molly.

She clucks at him but it doesn't feel patronizing. She seems happier, now; or perhaps it's that everyone seems better, in comparison to John.

She gives him a biscuit and a cup of tea and he thinks that he might mend.

(The thought goes away as soon as he gets home.)

*

John can’t deal.

He doesn’t know what to do with himself, now; he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to go about his life without Sherlock there.

He never would have thought himself to become so attached to him – to _a_ him, at all. Before Sherlock, he was positive about everything, about his future, about what he wanted his future to be like – and then Sherlock, and then _Iraq or Afghanistan?_ and John wasn’t sure anymore.

It doesn’t matter, now, what he is or isn’t sure of. It doesn’t matter what his life would have become had he stayed because he hasn’t, because Sherlock’s left him, because for everything that Sherlock knew how to do staying alive wasn’t one of them.

And John is alone.

(He’s not alone, not really, but in the ways that matter, he's never felt lonelier.)

*

Mycroft visits him, once.

He smiles and John thinks for a moment how uncomfortable - before he lapses back into Not Thinking because it hurts less.

“John,” Mycroft had said, and then, a hand on the shoulder, squeezing once. “I – my brother – he didn’t care for many people but he cared for you.”

John hadn’t said anything, and after a moment Mycroft had nodded, left, without another word.

He didn’t know what to do with that, because Sherlock – he wasn’t one to care, was one to tell everyone how much he didn’t but he’d seemed to tolerate John more than other people, and –

He closes his eyes against it, the wave of hurt threatening to engulf him.

It doesn’t matter who Sherlock cared for, or why, because he’s dead.

He’s dead and no matter how many times John thinks he sees him, that’s not going to change.

He’s dead, left his version of a note with John, and he has the memories to prove it – the memory of a hand, held up in farewell, the memory of Sherlock’s voice shaking, just so, and the rough, twisted memory of the fall, of running, of _I’m a doctor_ and _He’s my friend_.

Pulling back the blanket in the morgue, Molly staring at him with wide eyes.

He remembers and so Sherlock must be dead.

*

He does, eventually, move on, in a way.

He goes on dates and doesn’t compare them to the man who haunts his thoughts. He goes to the graveyard less and less, once a month if at all. He smiles at Mrs. Hudson.

They’re small things, but they make him feel more human.

He doesn’t feel human much, lately. He’s more cold, he knows, and he wonders if this is Sherlock’s ghost, living on – but of course that’s ludicrous, because Sherlock wouldn’t have chosen someone as ordinary as John to live in.

*

He sees him, one day, outside 221B.

It’s him, irrefutably, and he isn’t smiling but he’s standing as though he’s waiting for something.

John’s mouth falls open and he’s shaking his head, hard, because that isn’t possible and he spent too long mourning and too long getting over the mourning for it to have been for nothing.

He leans against his cane, the only solid thing in this world, and _he must be dead because my psychosomatic limp has returned and if he were alive it wouldn't -_

“John,” he hears, and he’s moving without thought, and when he reaches him he punches him in the face, as hard as he can, still leaning against the cane.

_He’s alive_. The thought reverberates through him and he wants to sob with relief, with – something.

Sherlock looks at him, holding a hand to his cheek.

“Why?” John asks, because he has to, because a ghost is standing in front of him and he needs explanation.

“I’ll explain.” Sherlock holds out a hand. “Inside?”

He should be angry. He should be absolutely livid, and he is – but that’s not what’s coursing through him, making him want to collapse into a chair.

He’s relieved.

He has his best friend back.

John nods, and takes his hand.


End file.
